Camie Rembrandt: Hi everyone! Welcome to the Virtual Worlds Education Roundtable. VWER is a forum to educate and inform the community about issues that are important and relevant to education in virtual worlds. We meet for an hour every Thursday at 12 Noon SLT. This is a public meeting and we will be keeping and publishing a transcript. Since 2008, VWER has been developing a community of educators from around the world.

Camie Rembrandt: Please join the VWER group here in SL, and if you are on Facebook, or Google+, please join our groups there as well. Also, find and post pictures to our Flickr group, and follow us on Twitter @VWER. When you blog or tweet about our meetings, please remember to include the hashtag #vwer. VWER’s new domain is http://VWER.info (Kudos to Beth Ghostraven for creating the new website.)

Beth Ghostraven: I’m Beth Ghostraven, middle school teacher-librarian in RL and owner of the Book and Tankard Pub in Victoria City, Caledon in SL; owner of Ghostraven Professional Attire, classic clothing for educators in SL (http://bethghostraven.com); Communications Chair for the VWBPE Conference; Communications Chair and Focus Sessions Producer for the ISTE Virtual Environments Network; and unofficial liaison between education groups in SL.For information on events for the educational groups that I work with, see the ISTE VEN Massive Open Online Calendar at http://venetwork.weebly.com/calendar.html; Twitter: @booklady9 I’ll be taking photos to publish with the transcript; if you have any objection, please IM me.

Camie Rembrandt: Okay, Maggie, please tell us all aboutVWMOOC18!

Maggie Larimore: Thanks Camie

Maggie Larimore: I prepared an info board last night with landmarks, a URL listing playlists from previous years, and a notecard inviting speakers, telling students how to sign up and so on. [Notecards are appended at the end of this transcript.]

Sheila Yoshikawa: Great!

Maggie Larimore: As most of you know already, Dr Nellie Deustch (Nellie Homewood in SL) had the original idea to do a multiplatform MOOC on virtual worlds education back in 2014. She enlisted the aid of her ESL/EFL colleague Dr Doris Molero (Pionia Destiny in RL) to organize the first SLMOOC in 2014. I was a student of that MOOC and helped with the WizIQ moderation, attended the Moodle portion of the course with 800+ learners, and set up the Integrating Technology for All building in Madhupak at the Southern end of the Chilbo neighborhood. In 2015, 2016 and 2017 I’ve been a co-organizer of the course with Nellie and Doris. Many if not most of you have presented in past years, sometimes several times

Maggie Larimore: The MOOC started in April but with Nellie’s heavy online and onsite conference schedule (both organizing and speaking), and with her returning to full-time ESL/EFL teaching at a high school near her home, we’ve been moving the MOOCs back month by month. This year, as you can see on the info, we’ve made a big leap back to August, and I’m hoping we’ll stay put in August from now on, but we’ll see

Beth Ghostraven: oh good, August! I had heard it was July, but August is much better for me

Maggie Larimore: Although Doris is building a teaching business in Argentina and is very much focused on the situation in Venezuela where she’s from, she will still be working with us to recruit teachers. But mainly Nellie will be handling the Moodle portion of the course (I’ll mention why that’s important in a bit), and I’ll be handling the development of Second Life resources and so on

Maggie Larimore: Because I have had to reduce my tier recently I have moved my own library up into the community, and have been working on a remodel of the VWMOOC Headquarters. I have also been inviting individuals from the old SLMOOC Second Life group to the new VWMOOC and updating the Facebook page now called Virtual Worlds MOOC

Maggie Larimore: Camie has taken an office on the street where the VWMOOC HQ is and will be building an installation to give students information about Sim-on-a-Stick

Wisdomseeker (Lissena): so we should leave the old group?

Maggie Larimore: Yes please

Sheila Yoshikawa: You’ve been busy @Maggie

Maggie Larimore: the new group is called Virtual World MOOC in SL (the Facebook group just had a name change so you’re good there) and I’ll be going over our old list from both the M & R Educational Group and the SLMOOC group before I eject folks from that old group and close it down. In the meantime whenever SL lets me …. sigh … I’m inviting folks to the new group. The Google docs links are also in the info board

Marly (Marly Milena): I joined new group but when I try to leave the old one I get message “Unable to leave…”! Oh, you may have to do it!

Maggie Larimore: Oh dear, not to worry Marly by July I’ll probably be ready to evict everything from the old group and close it, so not to worry

Maggie Larimore

Maggie Larimore: The Google docs only have the syllabus built out. While the presentation sign up sheet is there (and if you’d like to present let me know and I’ll get you the edit permission), so far that presentation sheet just has the opening and closing ceremonies. We’ve had a lot of interest to join the faculty from Mark Childs one of the excellent keynote presenters at this year’s VWBPE conference, so we’re hoping to have him sign up too

Wisdomseeker (Lissena): 🙂

Sheila Yoshikawa: so we contact you if we are interested in contributing?

Maggie Larimore: otherwise we’re open to presenters (you can do presentations in world, on your own webinar system, or in another virtual world … last year we had WizIQ, Adobe Connect, Minecraft, Digiworlds and so on ..

Maggie Larimore: we’re also looking for folks who want to highlight their own work, their student’s work, give tours of their installations, we’re also hoping to get a bit more research this year, and of course find the time to set up a skills workshop or two or three. I usually have the hopes of doing that myself but haven’t had time in some years

Beth Ghostraven: a skills workshop, Maggie? What does that mean?

Maggie Larimore: but if you have a date in mind, you can find that on the presentation doc and/or let me know of it you just want to let me know that would be great

Maggie Larimore: well Beth we’ve always had this plan to do some make and take kind of things like Mandie used to do for VSTE. I’ve asked her every year but she hasn’t been interested herself

Beth Ghostraven: oh, Norma Underwood has been doing some of those for VSTE lately

Maggie Larimore: some years back I did a camera workshop and a building a framed info board and putting together info. I’d love to do more of that kind of thing, maybe some basic building things, but usually I don’t have the time. If you could talk to Norma Beth that would be terrific and then I can follow up

Marly (Marly Milena): Are process skills included?

Maggie Larimore: sure any kind of skill that helps people who want to teach or learn in Second Life would be welcome

Marly (Marly Milena): What is your maximum of number of presenters?

Maggie Larimore: And I’ll be putting this info board in my Chilbo shop over on the other island

Maggie Larimore: it’s a month and we don’t like to kill ourselves because we have to keep up with the video load for those venues that don’t create automatic videos

Marly (Marly Milena): So, how many slots for each day in August? Two hour sessions or shorter?

Maggie Larimore: So back to the question, oh we’re thinking at least 4 somethings per week throughout August and they don’t have to be weekday, anything convenient for you all

Sheila Yoshikawa (with her Cheshire Cat) and Darkejade

Sheila Yoshikawa: So if we have ideas, should we just fill in on the document, or IM you first Maggie?

Maggie Larimore: usually we have about 24 presenters plus other stuff

Maggie Larimore: you can email me at nancy@theazire.org Sheila if you just want to chat and/or send me a notecard in world – sometimes I don’t get inworld and my IMs get capped

Marly (Marly Milena): Do presenters indicate how long they want the session to be or do you have guidelines for that?

Maggie Larimore: I usually set up a discussion forum once a week, I may be alternating them between SL and Digiworldz this year

Sheila Yoshikawa: thanks @Maggie

Maggie Larimore: usually a presentation/tour etc is between 30 and 90 minutes (I need to make a guideline notecard …) but really they can be what you need and we’ll just advertise that

Marly (Marly Milena): Thanks for the info

Wisdomseeker (Lissena): so even if people cannot attend the session they can access it through you afterwards?

Maggie Larimore: The way the Moodle works is that we get quite a lot of people who are interested in virtual worlds but don’t have the tech to be able to join us in SL or in other VWs so they join the Moodle version of the course to which we post the videos, the extras and have discussion forums. In the first MOOC in 2014 we had 800 people in the Moodle portion and only about 30 came in world, so the Moodle portion that Nellie runs is important to people who are interested in how this works but may not be able or ready to do something in a virtual world at the moment

Marly (Marly Milena): Will there be a direct URL link to videos of the sessions? Do you do filming of all of them or do we arrange that ourselves?

ThinkererSelby Evans (Thinkerer Melville): I could run sessions in my web world with links to the existing videos

Maggie Larimore: the playlists on Dr Nellie’s YouTube channel is also a permanent archive of all the past materials, and once the physical syllabus is up in the HQ there will be links to that as well

Maggie Larimore: you can video yourselves if you prefer

Maggie Larimore: in your case Marly I think I got you last one from you guys

Wisdomseeker (Lissena): yes Selby–that would be a good way for many to participate

Maggie Larimore: sometimes that doesn’t work out so well, we’re still waiting on the one the Cavanserai people were doing for us

Maggie Larimore: and sometimes I get bogged down or am technically challenged and procrastinate myself into oblivion, which is what happened to last year’s presentation by Xenia Bastet

Maggie Larimore: so we’re flexible basically

Marly (Marly Milena): You filmed my last one, Maggie, but we are taking clips from that for an education video we are making (among others)

Maggie Larimore: you can set things up to your liking, rely on us, rely on yourself, let us know, whatever you do or you want to do yourself, we’ll work with you

Wisdomseeker (Lissena): yes–you are always good to work with

Beth Ghostraven: agreed, Liss!

Maggie Larimore: I try, sometimes I get grumpy and for that I apologize in advance, but mostly I’m just toooo excited about everybody’s work/presentation to do anything but be enthralled and monumentally grateful to all you guys!

Maggie Larimore: I’m going to do another talk in June on the 21st for VWER. I’m distributing info boards. I’m doing a little article for VEJ’s next issue [Virtual Education Journal, https://issuu.com/edovation] which will be out in July; and any help you want to give us with marketing it is great. It’s free as always

Maggie Larimore: and forgive our dust in the HQ, I’m trying to finish up my own Library first, and then will finish up the HQ

Maggie Larimore: anybody have any questions?

Maggie Larimore: I hope some many or all of you will contribute

Maggie Larimore: so far I’ve only heard from Dodge Threebeards

Marly (Marly Milena): Will you have a reliable (as much as one can say that here!) MOAP board for showing videos or would you prefer that we send people to do it through their browsers in the session?

Maggie Larimore: what’s a MOAP board

Marly (Marly Milena): Media on a Prim

Maggie Larimore: the videos will all go to YouTube we hope within a day

Maggie Larimore: presenting videos during your presentation we’ll have to see about that

Marly (Marly Milena): I mean ones WE (presenters) might want to show

Maggie Larimore: reliable MOAP boards are not so easy to find

Maggie Larimore: right, if you can bring something, we can also check in the Apollo Theater in the Chilbo Welcome Area. She has a great auditorium there (Duet Parx, a long-time resident of the Chilbo community) and a viewer; we might be able to use that. Otherwise we’ll work with you all to do that

Marly (Marly Milena): Or could we take attendees to our own areas for the MOOC sessions?

Maggie Larimore: absolutely–as always, many of the presentations are onsite in the presenters’ own area. Only those who want to use the headquarters need to use it, we’re flexible, and it’s a lot of fun for the students to travel

Beth Ghostraven: Maggie, Norma is on her way; she thinks she might be able to help out

Maggie Larimore: Hi Norma

Marly (Marly Milena): Yeah, but things change so I pretend that each year is a different story! LOL

Maggie Larimore: we were talking about you!

Norma Underwood: Hello everyone

ThinkererSelby Evans (Thinkerer Melville): Best plan on offering both MOAP and link to YouTube –Some may not see the MOAP

Marly (Marly Milena): Yes, Sel, I just wondered if the MOAP would be one option or not at all

Maggie Larimore: right, I like to have links to youtube videos or other external sources that can be put in chat during presentations for those who want to see something and can’t see what’s being present

Sheila Yoshikawa: yes always a good idea

Maggie Larimore: we’ll also have a google calendar and I’ll push to keep that up to date, including updating presentation descriptions with posted videos

Maggie Larimore: Norma your name came up because our annual course would love to have workshops on building skills for the students, and if that’s something you’d like to help us with we would be thrilled. The information on the course is in the info board

Marly (Marly Milena): When will you be ready to receive proposals? (Forgive me if you already answered that)

Norma Underwood: I am always happy to teach building

Maggie Larimore: last year Sparky Mandelbrot built us a display space for powerpoints and info boxes and so on for the presenters

Norma Underwood: are we talking college students?

Maggie Larimore: this info board has the URL there as well

Maggie Larimore: the students are usually teachers and some college/post grade students, but usually mostly teachers interested in teaching in virtual worlds

Norma Underwood: sweet

Norma Underwood: Love to teach other teachers

Maggie Larimore: so currently the SLMOOC17 display land is still up and I’ll be clearning it out in July probably

Maggie Larimore: I’ve just written Sparky to figure out when we’re going to do that

Maggie Larimore: but this year presenters, workshop holders etc can also take a kiosk and put in their materials and that will be available in Chilbo until VWMOOC2019

Maggie Larimore: if you presented last year, I’ll be getting in touch with you after the June 21st talk for VWER on how it’s going, and then sending you the materials from last year

Wisdomseeker (Lissena): didn’t you do that last year too?

Maggie Larimore: yep, and all those boards are still up and available, and I want to keep that as is until the end of June so that people who see this board can go check out last year’s stuff for inspiration

Wisdomseeker (Lissena): you are coming here again?

Maggie Larimore: Camie signed me up for June 21st when we should have more folks on the sign up list and have more idea of what the curriculum will be

Wisdomseeker (Lissena): great!

Maggie Larimore: we don’t know who the moderator will be in June yet

Camie Rembrandt: Maybe you, Maggie? Could you do it?

Maggie Larimore: and then I’m hoping to go to Not for Profit Commons, maybe something ISTE/VSTE at the end of June/early July, plus we’ll already have 2018 tutorials up on the VWMOOC2018 Playlist on Nellie’s channel by then

Sheila Yoshikawa: Kali may be here but we are not 100% sure at the moment

Maggie Larimore: oh I’d love to see Kali again

Sheila Yoshikawa: I will entice her with that thought 😉

Camie Rembrandt: :))

Maggie Larimore: if any of you guys know folks doing research, we would really like to have a bit more academic content this year as well

Marly (Marly Milena): Remember that Valibrarian and I are doing a program in SL via ISTE Chicago conference on Monday, June 25 so hope you will keep that free and all come to that!

Maggie Larimore: can’t wait for that, wish I could go, I grew up about 70 miles northwest of Chicago and lived there for 11 years in the 70s/early 80s and haven’t been back since 2004

Maggie Larimore: sigh ….

Maggie Larimore: thanks for your attention guys

Maggie Larimore: and yes if you want to present, sign up; if you want to brainstorm, send me a notecard or email me at nancy@theazire.org

Marly (Marly Milena): We should make a Dunce List. I bet all of us are clueless about some things and brilliant about others! LOL

Camie Rembrandt: Thank you, Maggie!

Maggie Larimore: we’re gearing up to get there

ThinkererSelby Evans (Thinkerer Melville): SL has a bug in the permissions setting, retaining system

Maggie Larimore: sheesh

Sheila Yoshikawa: sheesh indeed, thanks Selby

Sheila Yoshikawa: Thanks to Camie for organising this and the last few weeks of VWER!

Camie Rembrandt: You’re welcome 🙂

Wisdomseeker (Lissena): claps

ThinkererSelby Evans (Thinkerer Melville): Has had that bug since 2008 that I know of

Maggie Larimore: and thanks to Camie fo thinking of setting up an installation on Sim on a Stick just down the street from the HQ such a GREAT idea!

Wisdomseeker (Lissena): will come look

Camie Rembrandt: Thank you, Maggie!

Sheila Yoshikawa: Thanks Maggie!

Maggie Larimore: and if you visit Chilbo we’re in the process of rewriting the walking/flying tour again

Beth Ghostraven: thank you so much Maggie! This is a TON of work that you’re doing!

This year the Virtual Worlds MOOC 2018 is recruiting speakers and presenters to showcase their own work as educators in virtual worlds (OpenSim worlds are more than welcome — we’re hoping to become even more metaversy than previous years …), the accomplishments of their students, research, theory of practice, and anything that might impact on the betterment of educational usages of Virtual Worlds in all levels and types of education.

Our theme this year is Connecting iin Virtual Worlds, Communities of Practice. If you have any idea for a presentation, please IM Maggie Larimore or Pionia Destiny, email nelliedeutsch@gmail.com or nancy@theazire.org.

If you have ideas of others, would like to volunteer for filming, discussion forum moderation or skills workshops, please let us know.

Notecard: URLs to Previous SLMOOCs YouTube Playlists

For more information on previous years presentations visit these playlists on the Nellie Deutsch YouTube Channel. Each one is a list of videos that include tutorals for the students, and presentations and tours that made up the bulk of the curriculum.